Glest 3.1 invaded by aliens

Glest: Alien Invasion

Gearhead2

Chromium BSU

Hot on the heels of Glest 3.0 is... Glest 3.1! Great to see the rejuvenated development of a poster Free Software game. This version continues to add multiplayer features such as in-game chat. Oh, and a new menu background. Eye candy! :-)

The mod scene for Glest has also never been healthier. The latest mod to show up (although currently just a WIP) is Glest: Alien Invasion. Pictures speak etc - see the images.

In the grand scheme of things, websites aren't that important. Or are they? Gearhead2 is a mech-based rogue-like. Maybe you like the sound of a [mech-based] rogue-like. To everybody else, the term 'rogue-like' tends to mean 'no graphics', so when you visit a web page like the homepage of Gearhead2, combined with the knowledge of it being a rogue-like, I bet the vast majority of people go no further. It looks awful, the screenshots link doesn't work, and because in the lay visitor's mind the game isn't graphical, it's game over already.

The shame of it is, Gearhead2 looks like a really promising game. It has a 3D version with a snazzy UI (it's predecessor Gearhead does not). Mechs are cool. There is a well supported forum. Somebody needs to just delete every bit of HTML on that Gearhead2 homepage and put up something 1. functional (i.e. working links) and 2. web layout !circa 1998.

Last but not least for today, Chromium BSU, the frantic top-down shooter, is under new maintainership. The Debian maintainer of the game has access to the Sourceforge project for Chromium BSU so will be applying patches that have been collecting for a few years in the various distros. Whether it'll see further development of the game is unlikely but it's good to avoid the usual bitrot of forgotten projects. Also I noticed the sequel project Chromium BSU 2: Second Strike, but despite there being source in SVN, it didn't really get off the ground.

In Internet-lameness news, I can't believe my Portalized exclusive barely made a dent on digg. I mean, utter rubbish which is merely a Portal influence gets 1000s of diggs. How come a [possibly open source] improvement on Portal's game dynamics not even break double-digits? I mean, I got more damn "diggs"* on FSDaily! The Internet won't do what I want. It's officially lame. Want to correct this ludicrous aberration? Go forth and DIGG!

* Is digg a new verb? What would you call it on FSDaily? FSDailied? :-?

New Releases on the Horizon

There are imminent releases for OpenCity and Pingus.

OpenCity 0.0.4beta is looking a lot more playable than it's version number suggests with the TODO looking like 0.0.5 will contain most elements you'd expect in a city simulation game.

Pingus will probably be a 0.7 alpha release because the project is struggling for developers and Pingus 0.6 is getting withdrawn from distros as it needs the deprecated Clanlib 0.6 to run. It'd be nice to see a new Pingus release since the game is pretty much there, it just needs a few more levels and a tiny bit of polishing and it'll be better than the original Lemmings titles.

SuperTuxKart 0.2rc1 is available for download. There's been a lot of code activity so I'm waiting on the next rc to try it out although I think you need a good PC to play it - I've heard a few murmours that the graphics engine really needs optimising.

Enough of games that are gearing up to releases, there was a new game announced on the Linux Game Tome: Max Fighter, a 2D shooter with a strong asteroids influence. It's got nice graphics and is quite fun but the gameplay quickly becomes very repetitive and it's nowhere near as addictive as SolarWolf nor has the depth of Chromium BSU. It was also very choppy / low fps on my 1ghz laptop. In times of CPU/GPU affluence it seems that increasingly developers are caring less about optimising their games.